Ode 1957

An intellectual is all the time showing off.

Lovers dissolve and become bewildered.

Intellectuals try not to drown,
while the whole purpose of loves
is drowning.

Intellectual invent
ways to rest, and then lie down~
in those beds.

Lovers feel ashamed
of comforting ideas.

You’ve seen a glob
of oil on water? That’s how a lover
sits with intellectuals, there, but alone
in a circle of himself.

Some intellectual
tries to give sound advice to a lover.

All he hears back is, I love you.

I love you.

Love is musk. Don’t deny it
when you smell the scent!

Love is a tree.

Lovers, the shade of the long branches.

To the intellectual mind, a child must learn
to grow up and be adult.

In the station of love,
you see old men getting younger and younger.

Shams chose to live low in the roots
for you. So now, he soars in the air
as you sublimely articulating love!

From: Rumi – Like This
Versions by: Coleman Barks